Emotional Affairs

The expression "emotional affair" is a bit of a loaded one, isn’t it?

There’s a lot of judgement bundled up with it. The sort of thing that someone might be accused of in an argument.

It’s perhaps even a bit glib and reductive; potentially jealously policing friendships and isolating people from sources of support. That’s something we can see in abusive relationships and something we have to be looking out for.

A physical affair is much clearer, and we’re either doing that or we’re not, but where is the line between a close friendship with someone of a gender you would be attracted to, and cheating on your partner in an emotional sense? Depending on who you talk to, you may hear different things, and certainly our old pal reddit may have some very extreme opinions on what constitutes cheating.

Understandably it’s messy and can be confusing and that’s just from the perspective of a traditional two person relationship. Different relationship types mean different rules and that can be very personal to the people involved rather than it needing to confirm to what other relationships are doing. The commonality is if those rules are violated, people are hurt.

For the moment, I’m going to concentrate on ‘emotional affairs’ in a more traditional situation; a person is partnered or married to someone, and they become very close to someone else to the determinant of their existing relationship.

It might be more useful to think about it along a continuum; it may start as closeness and swapping notes about what might be going on in their lives, but with time that intimacy grows and we might even become secretive about it with our partner. The common consensus is really that when we are at the point of sharing things that would embarrass our partner and we are being secretive about messaging or talking to the other person, that is when the line is crossed.

Realising we’re at that point can be a wake-up call, and someone can put a stop to it and withdraw but withdrawing alone might not be fixing the problem. Really being able to move forward instead of just resetting and perhaps walking into another similar situation in the future involves honesty and reflection.

If we want to learn and move forward, what is it in our current relationship that we’re unhappy with? Have things become tired and routine? Have things been overwhelming? Are we making time for intimacy? Do we no longer feel safe? Rather than focusing on blame, exploration can help us identify the problems and do something positive about them.

While the term “emotional affair” may be used a little too casually on social media to be entirely useful, noticing that we’re preferring to spend more time with someone other than our partner can be an opportunity to make things right. Counselling with a clinical professional can be a safe place to explore things, get to the bottom of what’s missing and make positive changes.

If you’re having a problem with your mental health and you would like to discuss it with a BACP-accredited professional, you can get in touch with me via the submission form on the website or drop me a message directly at mckellarCBT@gmail.com